The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) research team has just debuted a new way of building flexible nontoxic golden film out of golden wires. They predict it will be a major step in wearable sensor research since it is comfortable and convenient for health usage, especially that it won’t be harmful to the human body causing any extra chemicals to do its function.

With one of his attempt in separating microfluidics, Reyes Hernandez NIST biomedical engineer found out that flexible plastic membranes can help conducting electricity. While twisting golden films on this membrane, that is similar to warp, the film kept connected even though all the twists and bends.

“Apparently the pores keep the gold from cracking as dramatically as usual,” Hernandez said. “The cracks are so tiny that the gold still conducts well after bending.”

“This thin membrane could fit into very small places,” he said, “and its flexibility and high conductivity make it a very special material, almost one of a kind.”

Hopefully, this discovery will lead Hernandez and his team to a new level of integrating small and convenient healthcare sensors in our body. The fact that the gold is non toxic and the superconductivity of the porous plastic membrane makes it a great deal to combine them in future researches and applications.

More information about the golden-membrane conductivity you can check NIST official page.

Have you ever been unsure which display you should be using in your next project? This tutorial from educ8s.tv will come in handy for choosing the best display for your each and every Arduino project!

There are lots of choices, so let’s talk about each one of them. Basically, you have three types of displays: LCD displays, OLED displays, and E-paper displays.

LCD displays: LCD (liquid crystal display) is the technology used for displays in notebook and other smaller computers. Like light-emitting diode (LED) and gas-plasma technologies, LCDs allow displays to be much thinner than cathode ray tube (CRT) technology. LCD display is a flat-panel display or other electronic visual display that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals.

One of the famous LCD displays is Nokia 5110 LCD display, a basic graphic LCD screen for lots of applications. It was originally intended for as a cell phone screen.

Its controller is a low power CMOS LCD controller which makes it a good choice for low-consumption projects. It uses only 0.4mA when it is on and less than 0.06mA when in sleep mode. You have to use this library and you don’t need more than 8 wires to start using this display. This tutorial video will show you with details how to use Nokia 5110 LCD with Arduino:

A second choice is the OLED displays. OLED is an organic light emitting diode in which the emissiveelectroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light in response to an electric current. An OLED display works without a backlight; it can display deep black levels and can be thinner and lighter than a liquid crystal display. Thus, it is provides better contrast than the LCD choice but it becomes a bit more expensive.

One of the newest OLED displays is the color SSD1331 display that can display 65.000 colors. Just download its library from Adafruit and start using it. A video explaining how to use it is available here.

The last type is E-paper displays, that mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper.

Unlike LCD or OLED displays, these displays reflect light instead of emitting it. Such displays are great for low power projects since they have the ability to keep the text or the image you had set before for a really long time and without electricity. One of these displays disadvantages that they are absolutely costly compared with other choices, some displays can reach $60!

Here is a TI offer that you may be interested in. You get 10% off all TI tools + free standard shipping when you buy from the TI store through OEMSecrets comparison tool. Use code CYBERWEEK at checkout on the Ti store.

8 PIN SMD PIC development board is a full-featured development board and platform for 8-bit PIC® microcontrollers. This project is a versatile development solution, featuring several options for external sensors, off-board communication and human interface. Additionally, it offers ample room for expansion, making it an excellent solution for developers and engineers looking for a PIC development board. The 8 Pin SO8-SMD PIC Development / Evaluations Board demonstrates the capabilities of Microchip’s 8-bit microcontrollers, specifically, It can be used as a standalone demonstration board with a programmed part. With this board you can develop and prototype with all Microchip’s 8 PIN PIC microcontrollers which doesn’t required crystals (External Oscillator). On board connector for ICSP allows an easy programming. The board has configurable pull ups on all pins can be soldered or abandon as per requirement, All pins has solder Jumpers for pull down. Onboard 5V regulator, two tact switch, one output connector to interface with 12V Relay board or solid state AC or DC Relay. Board has small prototype area. We have considered PIC12F683 IC for this Board.

Anyone who has ever boiled milk on the stove knows, that it has a nasty habit of overflowing. That is why I created the temperature alarm for boiling milk to be used my mother. It continuously measures the temperature of the milk and sounds an alarm when the temperature is over the preset alarm value.

The hardware startup Pycom have been working hard to create a fast-develop-and-connect hardware portfolio, a portal and gathered enough developer manpower to unleash the IoT growth potential. Pycom has just launched its newest product: FiPy!

FiPy is the new IoT module that connects your device to other networks. According to what the company describes, it is the most comprehensive solution, unifying LTE with other proprietary or unlicensed LPWA technologies into a single, five-network IoT connectivity solution.

“In addition to WiFi, BLE, LoRa and Sigfox, we’ve added the latest cellular technology for IoT: LTE-M. But, we didn’t just go for one frequency type either. Nope, we partnered with the leaders in their field, Sequans, and are now proud to confirm that our module will have both CAT NB1 and CAT M1.”

Pycom is redefining IoT with this brand new module! FiPy gives access to all the world’s LPWAN networks on one tiny board. It is now live on Kickstarter, check the campaign video:

You can pre-order your FiPy now for $39, the campaign still has 23 days to go and it has already achieved double of its goal. More information about FiPy plus its sensors and accessories check the crowdfunding campaign and the official website.

Netatmo Weather Station is a module that measures your indoor comfort by providing vital information such as temperature, humidity, air quality, and CO2, alerting you when you need to air out your home to bring down its pollution levels.

One of the Netatmo limitations is that you need to use a smartphone to view the collected information by the station. To solve this, Barzok had developed an Arduino-based screen to display the weather data remotely, and published a full guide to build it in this instructable.

The next experiment was connecting the Arduino UNO with Netatmo API through an Ethernet shield and displaying the data on the screen. The connection was the difficult part as the Arduino was not powerful enough to establish an HTTPS connection and receive valuable information from Netatmo servers.

The solution uses a PHP client on a web server, which connects with Netatmo servers, and then the Arduino retrieves the data using the standard HTTP.

The final version of the station consists of an Arduino Mega, two 2.8” inches screens, and an ESP8266 Wifi module. There is no limit of the Arduino type and screen size, you can use your model with minor changes of the code. Barzok also made a custom circuit that transforms the 9V input voltage into a 5V to power the Arduino and 3.3V to power the ESP8266.

The diagram presents the process, the Netatmo module gathers the weather information and uploads them to the Netatmo servers. Then a PHP application runs on remote server and retrieves the information from the Netatmo servers and turns it into simple text data. Finally the Arduino receives the simple texts with the ESP8266 module and displays them on the two screens.

The two screens displays different information, the left one provides the real time data received from the Netatmo sensors about temperature, pressure, humidity, rain and CO2. The other screen shows the time and date, pressure history, and 3 days weather forecast.

You can find more instructions to build this project with detailed description about the code, schematics, box design at the project page.

“Tiago” tipped us with his latest Android App. His app, ElectroCalc is a fast calculator for electrical and electronic circuits. The calculator includes many tools and comes in a free and a Pro version. Check it out!

In this tutorial GreatScottLab will show us how to build a power meter and logger using Arduino and INA219 power monitor IC:

In this project I will show you how I combined an Arduino, an INA219 power monitor IC, an OLED LCD and a Micro SD Card PCB in order to create a power meter/logger that has more functions than the popular USB Power Meter. Let’s get started!

Linear Technology has launched a higher-temperature 150°C version of its LTC3786 step-up DC/DC controller that boasts 98% efficiency. This H-grade device replaces the boost diode with an N-channel MOSFET for higher efficiency and reduced power loss. by Susan Nordyk @ edn.com:

The controller produces a 24-V, 5-A output from a 12-V input with up to 98% efficiency, useful for automotive, industrial, and medical applications. It operates from an input voltage ranging from 4.5 V to 38 V during startup, maintains operations down to 2.5 V after startup, and regulates an output voltage as high as 60 V. Its low quiescent current of 55 µA helps extend the run time of battery-powered applications in standby mode.

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